Hello,
The HTML Patent Advisory Group (PAG) held a short meeting on 7
November 2003. Ten people attended. The PAG approved the minutes and
reviewed action items from the previous meeting: prior art is in the
process of being collected, and the scribe has compiled mainly US
press highlights for the group's reference.
The Chair reported on a phone call with Pennie & Edmonds [1] who
represented W3C. They are confident in their filing, and while
compiling more prior art may be useful it is not timely for the PAG
to actually develop additional cases.
A PAG participant commented that based on its antitrust and IPR
hearings last year the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has
published their report [2] which contains a section indicating that the
FTC will ask the USPTO Director in appropriate circumstances to
re-examine questionable patents that raise competitive concerns. The
PAG participant thought that W3C might consider sending a letter to
the FTC regarding the Eolas patent.
The group discussed what the USPTO process for re-examination
entails. It is thought that their decision to re-examine or not will
be made public. The re-examination itself is not an exchange with
W3C, rather it would be a dialog with Eolas that might take a year.
Re-examination is claim by claim, i.e., some, none, or all of the
claims in the '906 patent could be found to be invalid. The applicant
may submit more claims, and may appeal. If the USPTO decides to
re-examine, W3C may submit more prior art to help the examiner.
The HTML PAG meets next on 5 December.
[1] http://www.pennie.com/home.ihtml
[2] http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2003/10/cpreport.htm
Best wishes,
--
Susan Lesch http://www.w3.org/People/Lesch/
mailto:lesch@w3.org tel:+1.858.483.4819
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) http://www.w3.org/